Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Plumbing the Depths of the Cosmos with the Sacred Pipe

Peeking up where we leapt off yesterday, it is now Day Two and Miracle Six. What's on the divine agenda? Oh, not much, just a little vertical plumbing job. Rig up a starry firmament to divide the waters above from the waters below. Call the firmament heaven. Knock off early. Sounds good.

Twoday is the day of verticality. Initially there is only chaos, so the first order of business is the business of order, i.e., creating a little light with which to Work. Can't do anything without the old photons.

But there is "seeing" and there is "vision." The good vibrations of natural light allow us to see horizontally, but that isn't what makes us human.

Rather, what truly distinguishes us from the beasts and the tenured is the supernatural vision made possible by virtue of the verticality of the cosmos. Wisdom and sanctity, intellection and gnosis, only exist because they represent human modalities that are adequations to the reality of the vertical.

Only because of the vertical is Truth liberating; note also that lib-erty and genuine lib-eralism are impossible outside the vertical; in short, the horizontal cannot set one free: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17).

To turn it around, in the absence of verticality -- waters above and waters below -- wisdom and sanctity are impossible, which is soph-evident by virtue of our cardiomyopic looniversities, where there is a cornucrapia of intelligent proglodytes who don't know the difference between boys and girls, much less God and man.

Now, in the Creator's plumbing job, heaven is the nexus, or connecting link, between the upper and lower waters. Water is a reflective medium, so let us imagine that there is a "double reflection" of heaven in the waters above and below.

Above is the realm of ideas, while below is the realm of material things. As Tomberg points out, knowledge involves "the process of relating the real to the ideal corresponding to it." To under-stand is bring into relation "the reflection above, the ideal, with the reflection below, the real." This is another way of saying that the light of the logos is reflected in both directions as "ideas" and "realities"; or it is reflected in us as substance and intellection.

Science is a deeply mystical enterprise, for it presumes the absolute unity of existence, a unity that is mirrored in the mind capable of reliably apprehending that unity (there is no universe for animals, only the narrow environment to which they are adapted). Because there is a uni-verse, there are uni-versal truths, which is to say axial truth around which the intellect turns (a uni-verse is one turn).

Obviously, if the universe were not a true universe, but a relativistic multiverse with no underlying unity, then truth would be strictly impossible, nor could man be the cosmic truth-bearer, for that matter. So truth is ultimately guaranteed by the One without which neither science nor scientist could be. Indeed, not even being could be without the one who Is (or AM, to be precise: no AM, no IS).

Belmont Club discusses "post-normal science" (HT: Alan), but it might be more straightforward to simply call it "abnormal" and therefore pathological science, a cognitive disease that pervades the leftist looniversity bin. The pathological science of the left always tries to change the world prior to understanding it, which is why left wing thinkers are political activists and change chumps prior to being scholars (cf. Paul Krugman).

The left loves science, but only so long as it is in accord with their policy preferences. If science proves that a fetus is a human being, then it is trumped by a woman's absolute right to determine the value of the embryo. This is why unseasonably warm weather always proves global warming, but freakishly cold weather is just statistical noise. Heads they win, tales we lose.

(Thanks to the left, an academy award is almost as big a joke as a Nobel Prize.)

Just as there is a moral inversion at the heart of leftism, there is a cognitive inversion as well (which there must be, since truth and virtue converge in the vertical). Their pathological epistemology is actually an inevitable consequence of their luciferian ontology, which denies the vertical at the outset -- and therefore the possibility of unity and truth. Instead of unity and truth, they substitute solidarity and commitment, which is to say exterior or "top-down" order and coercive action, for the lie is always coercive whereas the truth attracts and draws us to it.

Now in the sixth miracle recorded in John, Jesus restores sight to a man who had been blind from birth. But this is a rather special form of blindness, for it prevents the works of God from being revealed in him (John 9:3).

Jesus then makes a curious remark about the need to work while it is day -- since the night is coming, when it will be beer o'clock and no man can work -- but that "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

The light of the world. Tomberg notes that the Logos "is not only the intelligence of the world, that is, the connection of the ideal with the real, but also the perception of the ideal and the real. For it is he who mirrors himself by way of ideas and by way of the facts of existence."

In other words, there is no knowledge, let alone truth, at the level of the senses, which in itself is sufficient to undermine any purely horizontal materialistic philosophy, including, of course, any and all forms of leftism. For once you "understand" materialism you have left materialism behind, for matter cannot understand anything.

Even the most bare act of understanding involves the union of the ideal and the real. Sensory experience does not interpret itself. In fact, only a severely autistic individual reduces the world to naked sensory impressions, and it would not be going too far to say that materialism itself is metaphysically autistic and therefore a priori incapable of "seeing the works of God."

The immanent logos -- i.e., the heavenly firmament reflected in the human intellect -- is that which confers our vertical orientation upon us, and allows us to be the reflecting medium -- the only one in all of creation -- capable of unifying the waters above (the ideal) and the waters below (the real).

Conversely, the absence (or rejection) of this logos is what makes leftist deconstructionists such fascinnoying textual deviates. These malign fantasists cannot reflect upon reality because they do not reflect the Real.

In John 9:6 the upper waters are provocatively represented by Jesus' saliva and the blending of it with earth (i.e., the infusion of the word into substance), with which he then anoints the blind man.

In our tradition of the guffaw-ha! experience, Raccoons are bobtized by the explosive "spittle on the computer screen" which makes Petey "present" to your most laughty self. For we take seriously the injunction to put on the new man (Col 3:10).

14 comments:

Anyway, this new term reminds me of the spruce goose they sent down the tarmac some months ago called, "different-sex marriage". Thankfully never got off the ground, that one. But these designs are always on the drawing boards.

Plumbing the depths of the cosmos? So that's what that dream was about...

I like the B'atman's latest saying; it illustrates the post rather nicely, in that "post-normal" anything is all about distortion of the truth.

Belmont Club discusses "post-normal science" (HT: Alan), but it might be more straightforward to simply call it "abnormal" and therefore pathological science, a cognitive disease that pervades the leftist looniversity bin.

In essence, it is an argument - or perhaps more accurately an all-out battle - with the Real, which can only be "won" by its militants if they succeed in distorting the truth so radically that it appears to be completely inverted.

But even if they win, it is a pyrrhic victory. Truth is unwarpable; should they succeed in distorting perceptions, everybody loses. It would be as comical as a Wile E. Coyote routine, except that too often the results are deadly serious. The fruits of such distortions are on parade all day every day.

"Only because of the vertical is Truth liberating; note also that lib-erty and genuine lib-eralism are impossible outside the vertical; in short, the horizontal cannot set one free: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17)."

Working over the problems of the world with a sensible but left leaning friend of mine last night. He's always been heavily involved in working with youts - summer camps, achievement camps, substitute teaching... he was at a Jr. High School dance and the kids began the bump & grind 'dancing', and not one to put up with the nonsense, he waded in and broke them up, and had to three times before it took, he was really struck and disturbed by their uncomprehending expressions of "What's the problem?!" when he separated them... he couldn't get over the fact - not that they were doing the groin grinding, but that they didn't see any problem with it and couldn't imagine what problem he had with it.

And I think I finally got through to him that 'Education' that focuses only on teaching skills, inserting facts, and with no other source providing higher 'values'... that is what you can expect, and all you can expect... so... 'How do you like it now?'

"...it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.” I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils."

This definitely falls under the heading "just because they can, doesn't mean they should..."

I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that in mammals, offspring of same-sex parents will have a higher proportion of serious physiological disorders? By which I mean, I doubt that it is enough to merely take two sets of chromosomes, put them together, and Hey, Presto! A whole new healthy critter! Rather, there is likely a very good reason that it takes one male and one female to make one new being, above and beyond simple delivery and insertion of the sets of chromosomes. Reasons having to do with complementary sets of genetic material and the complicated interactions between them.

Maybe I'm wrong, but this just smells a little too frankensteinian to me.

You know, I've read Tomberg's book (Lazarus..) twice now, although the last time was over a year ago, yet it is still producing fruit. Thanks be to Bob's World Famous FertilizerTM.

I think Tomberg teaches like Bion (although I don't know Bion very well) in that Tomberg gives you some seeds and then sends you out on your own. Grow your tree he says, in o'sense. This happens with MOTT as well.

You may disagree with this part Bob, but hear me out. You often say how gem-packed Schuon's work is. I don't disagree with that, but, and this is a compliment too, that when Schuon says something, it is said. Period.

But I think one could look at them like this this:Tomberg is to Seed, as Schuon is to Oak.

"Only because of the vertical is Truth liberating; note also that lib-erty and genuine lib-eralism are impossible outside the vertical; in short, the horizontal cannot set one free: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17)."

Aye! A thousand times, aye!

It's always pathetic when lefties attempt to twist what our Founding Fathers said (also the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, etc.) to mean whatever they want it to mean.

The horizontal can't set them free so they work on destroying the Reality, Truth n' Liberty.

Rather than be grateful they have liberty (albeit liberty they don't use or understand) they whine about toys in happy meals or lament the lack of power the state has to force everyone to talk, think and crap like they do.

"In John 9:6 the upper waters are provocatively represented by Jesus' saliva and the blending of it with earth (i.e., the infusion of the word into substance), with which he then anoints the blind man."

O wOw! Talk about crankin' up the O-lume! :^)

"In our tradition of the guffaw-ha! experience, Raccoons are bobtized by the explosive "spittle on the computer screen" which makes Petey "present" to your most laughty self. For we take seriously the injunction to put on the new man (Col 3:10)."

What About Bob?

Who spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Who is your nonlocal partner in disorganized crimethink? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!